So, she went. All Westminster had been questioning whether or not Anneliese Dodds, the worldwide growth minister, would resign over Keir Starmer’s choice to fund greater defence spending by slicing abroad support (as I prompt she could on the New Statesman podcast).
Yesterday, I used to be assured by an Anneliese-friendly cupboard minister that she wouldn’t. Dodds is without doubt one of the most cheap, loyal, unshowy of politicians. She faithfully accepted her demotion from the job of shadow chancellor in 2021 and since then she had been a “just-get-on-with-it” slogger for the Labour trigger. Not now.
Assist issues viscerally and emotionally to the Labour tribe and he or she might – if she selected – start one thing actually harmful on the Labour benches for him. However even now, I don’t see her because the backbench chief of a wider gentle left revolt.
But Dodds’ resignation sharpens the approaching battle between Starmer Central and the gentle left, recognized by the New Statesman because the consequence of this authorities’s “Reformation”, and by my colleague George Eaton because the revival of the previous Labour proper.
This isn’t going to be a confrontation between the left, as we now have all the time understood it in Labour phrases, and the cupboard; however quite, between leftish social democrats who’ve been intertwined with the Starmer mission, and the forthright push for a Labour populism to repel Reform.
It is going to be fought this spring over all the apparent points – welfare reform, tighter immigration coverage, the way forward for the help price range and schooling. There may be, I worry, a mighty conflict coming over spending cuts in unprotected departments by Easter (Dodds’ resignation letter pointedly states: “I additionally anticipated we’d collectively talk about our fiscal guidelines and method to taxation”).
Starmer, after a typically celebrated summit with Donald Trump, will replicate that no political triumph lasts very lengthy. Solely the very biggest politicians can genuinely “make the political climate” and within the context of the conservative revolution led by the White Home, the sensible energy of UK diplomacy was all the time going to be restricted. However on tariffs, on some type of US backstop in Ukraine and on the Chagos deal, Starmer a minimum of confirmed himself an efficient producer of umbrellas.
He returns to London forward of a significant gathering of EU leaders as a British politician who has been a surprisingly efficient advocate for Ukraine – though we can’t actually assess this till after the Trump-Zelenskyy summit. In private standing, he returns greater and stronger than when he left.
So, the following query needed to be how he would use this elevated authority. There are apparent crunch factors round spending, the expansion agenda, and internet zero. The way forward for the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and fuel fields can’t be ignored for for much longer. (How is Ed Miliband feeling in the present day?)
However at a time when even Every day Telegraph writers describe this as some of the right-wing governments of recent instances, Starmer has to discover a approach of convincing his occasion there may be nonetheless a real left-of-centre persona lurking someplace inside it. And he’ll flip, absolutely, to Angela Rayner simply as Tony Blair used to show to John Prescott.
That in itself can be a great factor as a result of there was an excessive amount of whispering in opposition to senior feminine cupboard ministers not too long ago – Bridget Phillipson, Lisa Nandy and even Rachel Reeves. A number of the briefing has nothing to do with sexism and every part to do with politics however with Louise Haigh and now Anneliese Dodds on the backbenches, it is a probably poisonous narrative No 10 has to observe very intently. Welcome residence, Keir!